The present invention relates generally to education and more particularly to using tests to assess and to enhance a student's understanding in a subject.
The foundation of a vibrant society depends on education. In order to strengthen this foundation, every year the U.S. Government has poured billions of dollars into the educational system. Money has been spent in areas such as laboratory facilities, educational materials, the recruiting of teachers and using computers to enhance our educational system. However, for decades, the way to test a student has remained the same.
Almost all forms of education require testing because testing can assess a student's understanding in a subject. Testing can also serve as an educational aid. For example, one can learn a subject by taking tests if the tests are well designed and if the student can meticulously analyze the solutions to the questions.
For most national tests, such as the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT), the questions are in the form of multiple choices, and are automatically graded to produce a report. Typically, grading and report generating are computerized. For SAT, the report includes two scores--one indicating a student's mathematics skill, and the other the student's verbal skill. It is impossible to decipher from the two numbers the areas where the student are weak. For example, if his mathematics score is low, it is not clear if that is because he is weak in algebra or geometry or both.
If the student is not satisfied with his scores, he may go for a remedial class. Typically, in such a class, the student takes many tests with many other students. The tests for all the students in the class are the same, because it is very difficult to manually tailor each test to the understanding of each student. After a test, a student compares her test results with her previous results to see if she has improved. Again, the comparison is quite superficial. Usually, the student compares the final grades of the tests--if the recent test score is higher than a previous test score, then she assumes that she has improved. This type of simple feedback on one's performance is not very helpful to the student.
A typical testing process and a typical learning process have a lot of similarities. If a high school student is in an algebra class, the student studies the basic concepts, and then works on a number of assignments, which are the same for all the other students in his class. Again, the questions are not specifically tailored to each student's capability. For a studious student, he would re-work the wrong answers until he gets them correct. However, it is not clear if he has finally understood the concept, or if he has worked on the same assignments so many times that he has either memorized or correctly guessed the answers. These standard assignments lack the feedback that is required to enhance understanding.
It should be apparent from the foregoing that there is still a need for a system and a method to more precisely assess and to enhance a student's understanding in a subject. There is also a need to generate tests that are specifically tailored to a student's weaknesses in the subject, which again would help a student learn. Furthermore, it is desirable that the learning process takes into account the student's past performance to have a better indication of the student's progress in understanding the subject.